After a release, then a trip back into labs, Google is relaunching their SMS to chat services from Gmail. Users can send text messages to phone simply by entering in their phone number in the Chat window. The service originally encountered bugs and was promptly pulled from public use. Looks like they’ve remedied the problems.

Google says:

Send SMS text messages right from Gmail. You chat from your comfy computer and reach your friends on the go; they get your messages as texts and can peck out replies on their little keyboards.

To activate the service in Gmail, users need to go to Settings > Labs and almost to the bottom of the list, enable “SMS in Chat” (look for the dark blue bar).